Clients, in their individual capacity or as managers of a business organization, retain professional facilitators to obtain treatment services for present or future events or transactions. Typically such facilitators are licensed and regulated professionals in financial services, healthcare, legal, academic, athletic competition, engineering or scientific fields. Other treatment services procured by clients include by way of non-limiting example procurement of complex technical and/or capital-intensive goods or services, such as building construction, information processing technology or life-critical systems or services.
In the past, facilitators and their clients have devised treatment plans using quantifiable, objective metrics in their decision-making process, in order to achieve defined goal-based strategic plans. Illustrative treatment plans are protocols for treatment of serious medical conditions, legal matters, tax planning, financial planning advisory services, athletic training, home or business construction projects and business consulting. While objective milestones and completion results of a treatment plan can be analyzed and quantified rationally, an individual client may not be emotionally satisfied by a treatment experience, because the emotional factors were not included in the treatment plan decision-making process. For example, a patient may feel comfortable with a first physician's demeanor in communicating a medical diagnosis and treatment options to him or her, but dissatisfied with a second physician's communication demeanor of identical objective medical information. In the second scenario it would have been beneficial for the second physician to know, before the patient consultation, how that particular patient prefers to receive and evaluate unknown outcome information, in order to meet the patient's emotional as well as physical wellbeing needs.
Social scientists recognize that human decision-making is influenced by behavioral and psychological preferences that are unique to each individual. The individual person's unique preference, attitude, or mood influence how that person perceives and processes information about events with uncertain future outcomes and how that person absorbs information. Preference, mood, or attitude for processing uncertainty is hereafter referred to as “risk temperament” (“RT”), but that should not be confused with common use of the term in the financial services field. Objective risk temperament in the financial services field generally refers to factual consequences of investment decisions and more particularly to impact of portfolio valuation volatility on achieving financial goal metrics. Preferences, moods, or attitudes for absorption of information are generally recognized in the psychological and social sciences fields as “preference typology” or “PT”. While individual human beings have unique RT and PT profiles, statistically they can be clustered or grouped into finite sets of behavioral preference classifications. Human resource professionals and industrial psychologists administer RT and/or PT psychological profile tests to prospective and present employees, which include open-ended questions or statements. The question and statement responses are compiled and classified to provide abstract information that is indicative of the respondent's ways to resolve uncertainty and process information during decision-making exercises. In theory, the testing business organization optimizes each individual employee's job performance by tailoring employee interactions with others and the work environment in ways that are compatible with the employee's behavioral strengths. For example, some employees prefer to concentrate on objective facts when formulating decisions. Other employees prefer to include intuitive, emotional, values, and/or subjective factors in their decision-making tasks.
In reality, there may not be an efficient or practical way to communicate RT/PT information about individual role-players to every person involved in a decision-making transaction. Returning to the prior example of the patient and physicians, given efficiency pressures and narrower specialization in the medical field, there is no presently practical way, other than word of mouth briefing from prior attending healthcare professionals who personally know the patent, for a physician to access information about the patient's individual RT/PT profile, so that the treatment decision interactions can be tailored to enhance the patient's emotional and physical wellness. Individual healthcare professional facilitators do not have sufficient treatment time to gather RT/PT profile information about each individual patient during initial patient consultations. Conversely, patients would soon tire of responding to a series of RT/PT profile questions each time they meet a new attending physician.
In another industry decision-making treatment scenario, an investment client might be served by more than one financial specialist. It would be helpful for all specialists to be able to have access to objectively quantifiable and reliable client RT/PT profile information, so that financial goal planning and interaction during decision-making sessions can be tailored in ways that are compatible with the client's ability to cope with uncertainties in financial markets and how the person best absorbs information. While two different financial clients may have identical financial backgrounds, investment timelines wealth accumulation goals and risk exposure to market volatility, the first client's psychological ability to cope with uncertainty (RT) might be relatively less than the second client's corresponding ability Thus, the first client might become dissatisfied with the investment advisor facilitator's services in a declining market return scenario if uncertainty anxieties were not discussed during prior financial planning decision-making sessions. The second client's preference typology (PT) may require greater active interaction with his or her facilitator investment advisor. Then, during the more active interaction, they can discuss “what if” scenarios during decision-making exercise. In contrast, the first client prefers to review and absorb detailed written analyst reports before starting the discussions. Each of the two clients requires distinctly different information communication methodologies and timing, even though both will ultimately receive the same objective information. When the financial advisor commences financial planning or portfolio review discussions, the first client might feel pressured by the advisor into making premature decisions without adequate preparation unless the advisor previously furnished detailed background analytical information. The second client might feel neglected if the advisor does not communicate the same analytical information within an interactive discussions setting.
Despite decision-making process enhancements and advantages offered by inclusion of individual abilities to absorb and process information about unknown outcomes, clients may be reluctant to divulge or release such personal information with facilitators absent their explicit consent to use and control such information. As any given person has many decision-making transactions with facilitators, repetitive inquiry and testing to determine RT/PT profile information would be unduly burdensome and expensive for consumers and facilitators.